Sports Illustrated layoffs

You're talking about the biggest events, one-week or one-day events. What about the day-to-day coverage? That's what sports needs to survive, and the media covering sports needs to survive.
A soccer writer can do a bang-up job on the women's final and the men's final. What about the rest of the year?
You and the other guy are not being honest if you believe soccer in the U.S. warrants a high-salaried person covering it, considering the current state of the media.

 

It means in any media criticism of the USWNT, really for any reason, comes with the price of judgment by the broad majority of the sports media that has already decided what people should think about any given issue.

 

As a wise man once said, "Deserve ain't got nothin' to do with it." That's what he had negotiated. Unless SI, pre-Maven was in some weird negotiating bubble, I imagine some other outlet offered him similar money, last time his contract was up. (My assumption would be that that publication or outlet isn't American.)

 

The most recent final night of women’s figure skating in the winter Olympics to a 15.2 rating on NBC. It was the lowest rating in decades. No woman from the US finished higher than ninth.

33.6 million watched Simone Biles win the all-around gold.

And, to be clear, I’m biased. I’d rather watch Simone Biles or Evgenia Medeveda, any day of the week, over any soccer match between any two teams, men’s or women’s. I think they’re better athletes doing more interesting things.

 

Gibberish.

 

Soccer is very popular in the US but on a week to week basis (not WCs), it is really only the EPL and the top European teams which break through. MLS and certainly the NWSL are not popular on TV and aren’t part of any sort of general sports discussion.

Wahl has the position as the top soccer writer in the US. I think he often comes across as too self important but he is a good writer, knowledgeable and is very well sourced both in the US and abroad.

 

The problem with comparing figure skating and gymnastics is that while there are regular tournaments, they aren't every week. Simone Biles competed in three national and two international events in 2019, when she won the AP Female Athlete of the Year.

 

I'm just sitting here waiting for a "Why do soccer fans try to force the game down my throat? And they all get so angry when you call it soccer instead of football!!"

 

The Premier League averaged 391,000 viewers on NBCSN in 2018-19. The NHL on NBCSN averaged 313,000. That's just one network when both have multiple platforms, including the NBC broadcast network. But it's also just one soccer league when the MLS, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A all have US distribution as well.

Should the elite hockey writers in the US not make six figures if the league they cover is outdrawn by a league that typically has its broadcasts at 9 or 10 in the morning?

 

OK. It’s not, and I’m not wrong, but OK.

 

And that's on the east coast.